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How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

DD is 8 weeks old and just had her first bottle. She took it just fine. I go back to work in 6 weeks. How often should we keep giving her bottles to keep her used to them? Is once a week enough? Twice?

Re: How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

I'm not sure there is anything to suggest that you actually need to introduce and maintain a bottle habit in anticipation of future bottle use. With my first baby I did that but with the second two, I just started the week before I went back to work and it worked just as well. For all I know I could have waited until the day of, it was probably mostly for my own reassurance to know that they would actually take it!

Re: How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

OK, it probably is just for my own reassurance. But I also want to do it a few times so I have a good idea how big to make the bottles for day care. We will aim for 1-2 a week. Often enough that we don't have to bother freezing/thawing the milk.

Re: How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

Keep the daycare bottles small. A mix of 1, 2, and 3 oz bottles. The 2 and 3 oz bottles are for when the baby is really hungry, and hasn't fed for a while. The 1 oz bottles are to top the baby off, if she finishes a larger bottle and still seems hungry. Using small portions encourages the caregiver to feed frequently, forces the caregiver to do some paced feeding (she will have to pause the feeding in order to reach for another bottle), and reduces the risk of a half-finished bottle being dumped down the sink because someone doesn't realize that unfinished breastmilk bottles can go back in the fridge.

Re: How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

Originally Posted by @llli*mommal

Keep the daycare bottles small. A mix of 1, 2, and 3 oz bottles. The 2 and 3 oz bottles are for when the baby is really hungry, and hasn't fed for a while. The 1 oz bottles are to top the baby off, if she finishes a larger bottle and still seems hungry. Using small portions encourages the caregiver to feed frequently, forces the caregiver to do some paced feeding (she will have to pause the feeding in order to reach for another bottle), and reduces the risk of a half-finished bottle being dumped down the sink because someone doesn't realize that unfinished breastmilk bottles can go back in the fridge.

I am pretty sure 3 different sized bottles would cause too much confusion. It's a day care center and while there are 2 teachers officially assigned to the room, there are going to be subs in and out for breaks, lunches, etc. They are required to dump any milk 1 hour after heating it.

Ideally, I want to try for a standard bottle size (2-3 oz, not sure yet) with one or two 1 oz toppers. But I know from my first that they don't know much about breastmilk, and it's hard to educate them when other mothers are sending four 8 oz bottles for an 8 hour day! Also my DD has a very strong suck. Both IBCLCs I have seen commented that it was really strong. So she is going to guzzle down any bottles. DH had a lot of trouble pacing her with the bottle. So I want a good idea of how much she really takes, so I can be prepared for the battle when they ask for more milk.

Re: How Often to Give Practice Bottles?

I personally would send the smaller sized bottles, then, if you know that your daycare is required to dump any unused milk 1 hour after heating it.

I'm sure you know this already, but just because baby can drink a certain amount of milk from a bottle doesn't necessarily mean baby NEEDS that much as a minimum all the time. So even if you find that your daughter is regularly taking 3+ oz in your practice feeds, I would probably still start with 2 oz feeds for daycare; both to minimize waste and to discourage overfeeding.

Apologies for the short responses! I'm usually responding one-handed on my smartphone!